The Mercy of Birds

CHAPTER 51: YELLOW SHRIVELS INTO GREY

CHAPTER 51
YELLOW SHRIVELS INTO GREY

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The visitation area was a narrow, white painted room with booths of telephone lining up against the two-sided mirrors paneled on the wall, one door that led to the outside world only for select people that were qualified for freedom, and a dead end. It bothered him too much—that drab, colorless corner, if it were up to him, he would've put a plant in there, or an effigy, or a painting, but this was a prison, not some alcove in a museum, they didn't care about that kind of thing. No one cared.

His wandering eyes met the gaze of the one other visitor in the room, separated by six or seven more booths between them. The person quickly averted their eyes as he caught them staring and when he switched his focus away to the guard standing by near the door, he also already had his gaze fixed on him. It fueled his paranoia, what more do these people know about me that I don't?

He straightened forward towards the plexiglass as he saw a movement on his peripheral vision and he was apt on time as Clementine entered through the door barred with metal on her side of the confinement. Her face blossomed like a spring flower once she perceived who it was that had come around.

She immediately surged forward towards the booth. She couldn't contain her happiness while he couldn't contain his ire.

He watched as she picked up the handset with one of her hands, but due to the curtailed length of her shackles, her other wrist was suspended along her every movement. He watched as she blew away the dark hair that blocked her vision, tucking the strands behind her ear. He watched as her fingers rapped against the receiver when she planted it against her ear, biting her lips when she couldn't hold his razor-sharp eyes, waiting for him patiently. She didn't urge him even if time was never in her favor, even though it was running out.

"Nicholas." Her lips moved to pronounce his name but he couldn't hear her voice. Until, with a strained motion, he grabbed his own receiver and he almost wished that he didn't, for when she said his name again, nothing could be more painful in this cruel world.

"Nicholas."

"Why can't I remember?" he promptly hurled the question, refusing to spare any more moment to linger on that voice.

Her countenance shifted as the lines on her face tensed, but she tried to veer off and mask her uneasiness. "I... how are you? It's been almost eight months. We missed your birthday, our birthday—"

"No, answer me," he asserted mercilessly, "why can't I remember?"

Her face fell, so was his heart. "Because... because he injected you... injection of this drug... a new drug... he's good at producing drugs... it could make you forget, but it also made you ill... the illness that you know now."

He gritted his teeth. A crawling sensation crept upon his skin from underneath his dark shirt, like a nip, a slither, a prick, a slimy ectoplasm exuding out of his pores all at once; virulent, repulsive. A force fought its way out of him as though an impending vomit as his vainglorious self wished to escape from its dirtied vessel. "How many times... was I there?"

"Just once, I promise, Nicholas, but it took... you refused to forget... he had to inject you... five times."

"And what is forty-seven?"

"It is how many times he raped me," she said.

Horror struck him. The retching caught in his throat. It was as though he was begging for his own death sentence with that question. "Forty-seven times?"

She stopped short from answering, clamping her quivering lips tight.

"Tell me!" he urged, but she shook her head in refusal, even then, deep down, the dreadful knowledge had been uncovered in him that with how many years she had to endure it, it really wasn't forty-seven...